Hmi question

>> We are interested in your HMI support components and we want to use 
>> them in our application.
>>
>> We have tested them and we have noticed that in some cases, when the
>> application is running, all stalls with the exception of the Report 
>> which works. When we "quit", the application destroys the 
>> NonRealTimeThread, but when it tries to terminate the ZeroTimeThread,
>> the message "Finalizing thread after 1000 tries" appears and the
>> application doesn't go forward. We have to terminate it pressing 
>> "CTRL+c".
>
> This looks like a deadlock in the realtime threads. Moreover, (as you
> maybe know) there is a bug 'somewhere' (rtai/orocos) so that lxrt 
> semaphores are not destroyed (see /proc/rtai/RTAI Names) after the 
> application finishes. Is this the case in your app ? It could be that
> it is rtai 3.0 specific...

We think so because using 'dmesg' command we had error about lxrt semaphores.
Now we are using RTAI 24.1.12.

>>
>> Have you ever had this problem? We have read about HMIConsoleOutput
>> that "It should not be used in hard realtime programs", have you
>> written this because of that problem?
>
> The HMI's run together with the execution extension of the control 
> kernel you are using. If the HMIOutput prints something, this is done

> right after the control loop. Therefore, the std::cout is not 'good' 
> in the Zero[Time|Latency]Thread under LXRT It will switch you back to
> soft realtime (wich normally does not cause a crash). If you replace
> the std::cout with rtos_printf() and include <os/fosi.h> it is again
> allowed, But we know that RTAI crashes if to much rt_printk's are done
> after each other :-(

We think that we have resolved our problem deleting every "std::cout"s or
changing them into "rt_std::cout"s in each our component and in your HMIConsoleOutput.hpp.

>> Moreover, we have read:
>>
>> "If the ReportingExtension is used, you can track the changes in 
>> another terminal window."
>>
>> How can we do this? We would like to see the Report in a terminal
>> window and give commands in another terminal window.

> what I do is : modify the xxx_reporting.cpf file so that :
>     <simple name="ReportFile" type="string">
>         <description>The file to write the reports to.
>         </description>
>         <value>results.txt</value>
>     </simple>
>     <simple name="WriteToStdOut" type="boolean">
>         <description>True if the report needs to be written to standard

>                      output.
>         </description>
>         <value>0</value>
>     </simple>
>     <simple name="WriteToFile" type="boolean">
>         <description>True if the report needs to be written to a file.
>         </description>
>         <value>1</value>
>     </simple>
>
> start the program in one console. Open another one, and do :
>
> tail -f results.txt

Ok, we have tried it and everything works. We didn't know tail command,
thanks.

> I have developed the 'index' operator for the next version meaning you
> can write now :
>
> var double6d d6 = double6d(0.0)
> set d6[0] = 3.14
> var double x = d6[0]
>
> cool, heh ? This opens the way to an 'array' type, which would 
> translate to a vector<double> in the code...

Very good job! We think that this could be useful in several applications.

Regard,
   Andrea & Stefano